“I name myself “lesbian” because this culture oppresses, silences, and destroys lesbians, even lesbians who don’t call themselves “lesbians.” I name myself “lesbian” because I want to be visible to other black lesbians. I name myself “lesbian” because I do not subscribe to predatory/institutionalized heterosexuality. I name myself lesbian because I want to be with women (and they don’t all have to call themselves “lesbians”). I name myself “lesbian” because it is part of my vision. I name myself lesbian because being woman-identified has kept me sane. I call myself “Black,” too, because Black is my perspective, my aesthetic, my politics, my vision, my sanity.”

(“New Notes on Lesbianism” (1983) in The Days of Good Looks: The Prose and Poetry of Cheryl Clarke, 1980 to 2005)

“I am calling upon bulldaggers, dykes, faggots, feminist femmes, fierce sissies, and other outrageous progressive queers to have a major multicultural sexual liberation…

editor’s note: Like a pearl diver swimming in a quagmire, I cannon-balled into the miasma of internet fiction. But what a gem I found for you! They say Love is all it takes to make a family. But in this short story, sound-proofing, creative babysitters, a rolodex of activist dykes, and a varied supply of baby werewolf chew toys give Love a helping, and sometimes hilarious, hand.

illustration by MARCOS CHIN

“How could you not be a basket case?” I stared out the window. “You’re in mourning and there’s a rabid frigging monster in your basement.”

Golden Crown Literary Society is an association and annual conference for lesbian writers and readers. They also sponsor literary awards known as the “Goldies” for the best of lesbian publishing in a given year.

The conference came to Portland, Oregon this year. (I am blogging this from the first night ice cream social of said conference.)

Below is a list of “Goldie” finalists. I will add links to excerpts from the novels and update with notable encounters, observations, quotes etc from the conference.

Lesbianic Authors, author-itative lesbians. Whatever you wanna call ’em. They’ve arrived. (Except for those of us who were already here. We were ahead of the curve.)

The Golden Crown Literary Society (GCLS) holds an annual conference for writers and readers. Last year was the first I had heard of it. This year is the first I’ve attended. The fact that they are literally bringing the conference to me was definitely a plus.

If you’re a fan of lesbian writers (and I am!) it’s a party with a celebrity guest list. If you’re a writer (that too!) it’s an opportunity to network, to swap tips, conversation and spit (wait no, that’s a different party) with your sheroes. And maybe sell a few books and enjoy knowing that the people you love reading are reading you!

Vandana Singh’s essay on travel, otherness and the need for diversity in speculative fiction becomes essential reading when you consider the links included. Linking to articles such as Nisi Shawl’s “Transracial Writing for the Sincere”, Jim Hines “Diversity, Appropriation and Writing the Other” and Samuel Delany’s “Escaping Ethnocentricity” creates an educational journey for every writer. And every reader. If you stay on the train for the next article, the next station stop, you’ll find sign-posts to new brilliant destinations; travelogues filled with writerly advice and possibilities and hope.

I was recently in the remote Alaskan town of Barrow for an academic project. Barrow is profoundly different from any place I have been: at 71.3 N latitude, it perches at the edge of the Arctic Ocean. During April, when I visited, the ocean is frozen as far as you can see. The tundra is white and flat, and there is no vegetation. Most of the people who live there are Inupiat Eskimos. It is as far removed as you can imagine from Delhi, where I grew up, or for that matter, Boston, near which city I now reside.

I was wandering through the bright hallways of Ilisagvik college in Barrow, looking for someone with whom I hoped to speak, when I found an efficient young administrative assistant. She assured me she would find the person I was seeking, and took my name down. As is usual in…

“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this —But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.”
― Vita Sackville-West, from a letter written to Virginia Woolf

Recently, SFF author Tansy Rayner Roberts wrote an excellent post debunking the idea that women did nothing interesting or useful throughout history, and that trying to write fictional stories based on this premise of feminine insignificance is therefore both inaccurate and offensive. To quote:

“History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.

History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely.